November 4, 2008

A friend comments on Obama’s grandmother’s death:

I believe this may be the most important event in determining the kind of president that Obama (if elected) will be.

It’s the ideals that he believes his grandmother represents that will be his guiding principles.
His grandmother and my grandmother were of the same generation, and I have heard him talk of her in much the same way as I have spoken of my grandmother: strong, hard-working, self-reliant, frugal and self-sacrificing.

I find it odd that a similar influence has led me to work hard, be frugal, self-reliant, and self-sacrificing, while he has come to believe that people can’t do it on their own; they need the government to provide for them.

My reply:

The only time I know of that Obama referenced his grandmother was in his speech on race. You remember the one the press heralded as the one for the ages, that didn’t stand the test of four weeks?

“I can no more disown him (Reverend Wright) than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.”

So, she sacrifices for him, loves him unconditionally and he uses her as a political prop for his own ends. Oh, and he calls her a racist too. He did the same in at least one of his books. I think that pretty much sums up his respect for her and that generation. There may be documented evidence (I don’t have time right now to look it up) when someone is looking forward to an event, they’ll hang on just that long. I see the timing of her death as karmic payback.